Since 1992, the Directors Guild of America has hosted an annual symposium featuring its nominees for outstanding feature film directing. From the first, film and television director Jeremy Kagan has moderated these sessions in which the finest contemporary directors weigh in on every aspect of the filmmaking process. In Directors Close Up, Second Edition, Kagan culled the most insightful and entertaining responses from sessions conducted between 1992 and 2005. In Directors Close Up 2, an all-new sequel, Kagan shines his spotlight on nominees from the 2006-2012 seminars as they discuss their work on some of the most brilliant films of the last several years. From script development through pre-production to production and post-production, the directors offer personal insights into every step of the creative process. They also reveal their candid takes on the best and worst aspects of their profession. Featuring materials from their productions--including storyboards, script notes, sketches, and on-set photos--Directors Close Up 2 will be of interest to both professional and aspiring directors, as well as film fans who will enjoy this inside look into making movies. The interviewed nominees featured in this volume: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire James Cameron, Avatar George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck. Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, No Country for Old Men Bill Condon, Dreamgirls Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine Lee Daniels, Precious David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Stephen Frears, The Queen Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton Paul Haggis, Crash Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist Tom Hooper, The King's Speech Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon Alejandro Gonz lez I rritu, Babel Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain Bennett Miller, Capote Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight and Inception Alexander Payne, The Descendants Jason Reitman, Up in the Air David O. Russell, The Fighter Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Martin Scorsese, The Departed and Hugo Steven Spielberg, Munich Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds Gus Van Sant, Milk

From script development through pre-production to production and post-production, famed directors offer personal insights into every step of the creative process. They also reveal their candid takes on the best and worst aspects of their profession. This second edition features personal materials from many of the directors, including storyboards, script notes, sketches, and on-set photos. Directors Close Up will be of interest to both professional and aspiring directors; as well as to film fans that will enjoy this inside look into making movies.

The core goal of Directing Screen Performances is to teach aspiring directors how to prepare and work with actors. Through a practical exploration of the major approaches to contemporary screen acting, you will learn how to formulate your own effective modes of communication to craft compelling performances. Directing performances for the screen starts well before the actor is cast and finishes well after the last slate is shot. In this book you will learn how to analyze a script, brief the casting director, rehearse the actors, decide on the visual treatment that enriches their performances, direct effectively on set and finesse the character in the edit. The director's process is clearly defined and augmented with illustrations, photographs and graphics, and each chapter concludes with practical exercises to consolidate the new knowledge.

The Essential TV Director's Handbook is written by an ex-BBC trainer with a great deal of experience in the world of television. It describes step-by-step how to prepare and direct every familiar type of common programme format including interviews, discussions, reportage, music and dramatisations shot either on location or in the multi-camera studio. It is the essential reference handbook for any director confronted by a new programme format or the challenge of an unfamiliar technology. An appendix suggests plans for the most commonly encountered studio situations. Television culture has been changing fast. Whilst technology races on at a frightening pace programme budgets have been slashed, job descriptions widened as more people have to `multi-skill', and traditional routes of entry have become increasingly difficult to find, with diminishing access to professional training. Yet the skills and practical knowledge required to make top quality programmes remain unaltered. `The Essential .... Handbook' series offers a range of no nonsense guides to the craft of TV programme making based on tried and tested tricks of the trade. Each book is written in an entertaining and informative way providing only the essential `need to know' information for beginner broadcasting professionals and students alike. The Essential TV Director's Handbook is written by an ex-BBC trainer with a great deal of experience in the world of television. It describes step-by-step how to prepare and direct every familiar type of common programme format including interviews, discussions, reportage, music and dramatisations shot either on location or in the multi-camera studio. It is the essential reference handbook for any director confronted by a new programme format or the challenge of an unfamiliar technology. An appendix suggests plans for the most commonly encountered studio situations. Peter Jarvis is a freelance producer and director of thirty years practical experience. He is Director of Television Training International and was for eight years Senior Production Instructor with BBC's Television Training Department.

• Insider author gives no-nonsense advice • Required reading for film students, educators, anyone interested in film From script analysis to post production, here is the all-inclusive guide to directing for film and television. Written by noted director-producer Myrl Schreibman, The Film Director Prepares offers practical insights on filmmaking, using real-life examples directors won’t learn in school. With topics including working with actors, using the camera to tell a story, setting mood, staging, maintaining performance levels, covering shots, and directing for different mediums, The Film Director Prepares will leave new directors truly prepared for their careers.

Today, the director is considered the leading artistic force behind a film. The production of a Hollywood movie requires the labor of many people, from screenwriters and editors to cinematographers and boom operators, but the director as author of the film overshadows them all. How did this concept of the director become so deeply ingrained in our understanding of cinema? In Hollywood’s Artists, Virginia Wright Wexman offers a groundbreaking history of how movie directors became cinematic auteurs that reveals and pinpoints the influence of the Directors Guild of America (DGA). Guided by Frank Capra’s mantra “one man, one film,” the Guild has portrayed its director-members as the creators responsible for turning Hollywood entertainment into cinematic art. Wexman details how the DGA differentiated itself from other industry unions, focusing on issues of status and creative control as opposed to bread-and-butter concerns like wages and working conditions. She also traces the Guild’s struggle for creative and legal power, exploring subjects from the language of on-screen credits to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigations of the movie industry. Wexman emphasizes the gendered nature of images of the great director, demonstrating how the DGA promoted the idea of the director as a masculine hero. Drawing on a broad array of archival sources, interviews, and theoretical and sociological insight, Hollywood’s Artists sheds new light on the ways in which the Directors Guild of America has shaped the role and image of directors both within the Hollywood system and in the culture at large.

David O. Russell (b. 1958) boasts a diverse body of work as a writer and director, spanning multiple genres and featuring radically differing aesthetic styles. While his early work comically explored taboo subjects with unerring directness, he has also investigated politics with explosive satire. In his most recent films, including American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook, Russell examines characters and situations that are at once everyday and also extraordinary. Whatever the project, Russell is driven to explore the idiosyncrasies that make each character human, and he extends that curiosity to explore what makes each actor unique. His attentiveness to his cast members has earned him the label of "actor's director," due in no small part to the many nominations and awards earned by a long list of Hollywood stars in his movies. Russell has also become one of our era's most interesting formal stylists as he adopts a visual design appropriate to each of his film's thematic concerns. The result may be a color palette resembling the washed-out pages of a newspaper achieved by manipulating the film stock for Three Kings or the tumultuous opening of The Fighter when an audacious, roving camera plunges viewers straight into the story from the very first shots of the film. Rather than building a signature style, Russell has instead tested the varied possibilities of cinematic expression. This career-spanning volume features conversations with scholars and journalists as well as filmmakers. Speaking to directors like Alexander Payne and Spike Jonze, Russell contextualizes each of his films, offers an intimate account of his evolving writing and directing process, and opens his life to reveal how a remarkable body of work has come to be.

David Fincher (b. 1962) did not go to film school and hates being defined as an auteur. He prefers to see himself as a craftsman, dutifully going about the art and business of making film. Trouble is, it's hard to be self-effacing when you are the director responsible for Se7en, Fight Club, and The Social Network. Along with Quentin Tarantino, Fincher is the most accomplished of the Generation X filmmakers to emerge in the early 1990s. This collection of interviews highlights Fincher's unwavering commitment to his craft as he evolved from an entrepreneurial music video director (Fincher helped Madonna become the undisputed queen of MTV) into an enterprising feature filmmaker. Fincher landed his first Hollywood blockbuster at twenty-seven with Alien3, but that film, handicapped by cost overruns and corporate mismanagement, taught Fincher that he needed absolute control over his work. Once he had it, with Se7en, he achieved instant box-office success and critical acclaim, as well as a close partnership with Brad Pitt that led to the cult favorite Fight Club. Fincher became circumspect in the 2000s after Panic Room, shooting ads and biding his time until Zodiac, when he returned to his mantra that “entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine. Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything's not okay.” Zodiac reinvigorated Fincher, inspiring a string of films—The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—that enthralled audiences and garnered his films dozens of Oscar nominations.

Over the past fifteen years, writer, producer and director Christopher Nolan has emerged from the margins of independent British cinema to become one of the most commercially successful directors in Hollywood. From Following (1998) to Interstellar (2014), Christopher Nolan's films explore philosophical concerns by experimenting with nonlinear storytelling while also working within classical Hollywood narrative and genre frameworks. Contextualizing and closely reading each of his films, this collection examines the director's play with memory, time, trauma, masculinity, and identity, and considers the function of music and video games and the effect of IMAX on his work.